Telephones are one of the most widely used communication tools in the world. At first, telephones were merely a convenient tool to allow people to communicate while they were physically separated. More recently, however, many companies use telephones to market products and services, provide technical support to customers, allow customers to access their own financial data, and so forth.
In order to more effectively use telephones for business and marketing purposes, call centers have been developed. In a call center, a relatively large number of agents handle telephone communication with clients. The matching of calls between clients and agents is typically performed by software. A simple example is used here to describe a few of the many advantages of using call centers. When a call is made to a call center, the telephone number of the calling line is typically made available to the call center by a telephone carrier. Based on this telephone number, the software in the call center can access a database to obtain information about the client who has that phone number. The software can then better route the call to an agent who can best handle the call based on predefined criteria (e.g., language skill, knowledge of products the customer bought, etc.). The software also immediately transfers relevant information about the client to a computer screen used by the agent. Thus, the agent can gain valuable information about the customer prior to receiving the call. As a result, the agent can more effectively handle the telephone transaction.
It can be seen from the above example that the enabling technology requires a combination of telephone switching and computer information processing technologies. The term commonly used in the art for this combined technology is computer-telephony-integration (CTI).
In recent years, advances in computer technology, telephony equipment, and infrastructure have provided many opportunities for improving telephone service. Similarly, development of the information and data network known as Internet, together with advances in computer hardware and software have led to a new multimedia telephone system which will be referred to herein as data-network-telephony (DNT) which encompasses all multimedia-based communication including Internet Protocol Network Telephony (IPNT). IPNT is a special case of Data Network Telephony (DNT) wherein telephone calls are computer-simulated, and audio data is transmitted in the form of data packets.
In DNT systems as well as in the older intelligent and CTI-enhanced telephony systems, both privately and publicly-switched, it is desirable to handle more calls faster and to provide improved service in every way. This desire applies to multimedia-based communications in addition to telephone calls, as some call centers have moved to combine DNT with CTI technologies. It is emphasized that computer-simulated calls attributed to DNT may be made over company Intranets and other sorts of data networks as well as the Internet. The Internet is primarily used an as an example in this specification because it is broad and pervasive with universal protocol.
One of the major goals of any call center is to maximize client satisfaction. Part of the satisfaction that a client might receive from doing business with a company relates to how quickly and efficiently he or she is served. For example, when a client calls in to place an order for a product or service, he or she does not want to be put on hold for a lengthy period of time.
If a client sends an E-mail, Voice mail or another type of multimedia communication, he or she does not want to be overlooked or forgotten on an agent's computer. Rather, the client desires that a timely and professional response will be sent back by the company. This is especially true with company-to-company buying of products or services. A typical buyer has many duties that can be interrupted because of inordinate amounts of time spent waiting to place an order. In these types of situations, idle time costs money, and in many cases, cannot be tolerated. Many orders are lost by companies who have put clients in long waiting queues or subjected them to long waiting periods for multimedia responses. Such clients often become annoyed, perhaps searching for a suitable competitor who can meet their needs in a timely manner.
With call centers evolving into sophisticated and fast-paced communication centers wherein telephone and multimedia communications are routine, it becomes desirable to be able to prioritize and intelligently route all forms of communication with the goal of expedient and professional service to the client in mind.
Intelligent routing rules put in place in some intelligent networks known to the inventors have provided some relief for callers who would be stuck in queue much longer without them. For example, in some intelligent networks known to the inventor, skill-based routing, predictive routing, routing based on agent availability, as well as other intelligent implementations have provided for a better use of agent time within a call-center environment, thereby shortening queue length and reducing waiting time. However, even with these developments, there are certain peak periods during call-center operation that long waiting queues are unavoidable. Also, Intelligent routing rules, such as predictive routing or routing based on skill set of the agent are somewhat limited in current art to conventional telephone apparatus and calls, which are termed in this specification Connection-Orientated Switched Telephony (COST) calls.
Another problem in the current art involves separation of different protocols that are associated with different communication forms. Intelligent routing must typically be separately implemented for each communication method that uses a separate protocol. For example, an Email routing system would typically be separate from a COST call routing system, and so on. No viable solutions have been offered in current art that would integrate and combine functions of a routing system in order to provide priority and skill based routing for COST calls as well as DNT calls including multimedia communications.
What is clearly needed is a method and apparatus enabling the implementation and practice of an intelligent queuing and routing function adapted to any form of call-center communication wherein clients may have a priority established for their selected form of communication; have their communication routed based on intelligent information such as skill of the agent, availability; and receive a response in order of established priority. A system such as this would reduce hardware, software, and operating costs associated with separate routing systems, while at the same time, improve call-center service level and efficiency.